I Am Insane
by carolnegate
Summary: I know that. Most people know that. What most people don't seem to know, though, is exactly how I'm insane. Do you want to know what Pyroland is really like? Or why I insist on wearing this suit all the time? Sure, I'll tell you.


They say that in order to survive in a crazy world, you have to be crazy yourself. I guess that explains why I've gotten through this war pretty much intact. I am completely insane.

Not that I'm the only insane person here, of course. Every one of my teammates is probably messed up in one way or another. I was the one of the few to join the team as full-blown lunatic, though. Most of the others were only borderline crazy at that point, but the war was enough to push them over the edge. For instance, our Scout was more or less a narcissistic jerk to begin with, but he didn't really start enjoying beating people to death with a bat until about a year or so of fighting.

Our Medic tells me there's a name for my insanity – synesthesia. It's a mental sickness where your senses get their wires crossed at times. You hear colors, see smells, and sometimes even taste different numbers or words. It's different for everyone who has it, and it has a pretty wide range of how severe it can be. Mild cases only make you think of certain colors when you think of certain numbers. The severe cases, on the other hand…

That would be me.

I guess it all started when I was little. The smell of sour milk always made little orange blurs whirl across my vision. I didn't like it at all, and it tended to make me very dizzy. There were other smells, too, that gave me weird hallucinations, but most of them were too strange or disorienting for me to bother repeating. A few different sounds and sights also joined in on the sensory mix-up action. Smells were my main source of weirdness, though.

I mentioned before that I didn't like it when my senses got crossed-over. That's a lie, in a way. Every day, I enjoy the scent of one particular thing as it makes the images of sunshine, rainbows, and bubbles appear in my head. This would be the smell of smoke.

The gas mask I wear keeps me from smelling any weird things on the battlefield, which then keeps my synesthesia from giving me a dozen different confusing visions in the heat of battle. However, with my job in the war, even the mask can't filter out all the smoke I make. The faint smells several different burning things combine in my head, leaving me seeing a beautiful landscape before me. It fills me with a kind of peace and happiness that nothing else has been able to give me.

So, yes, the gas mask. It lets me at least experience the perks of my disease without letting other smells get in the way and ruin the visions. That's why I keep it on at all times.

This is only one of the things I wear, though. Every second of the day, even when I sleep, I wear a special flame-retardant suit. I was sewn into it, so I can't exactly get out of it, but it also keeps me perfectly safe. There are no seams and no holes for heat to get through. My best friend, our Engineer, designed it to last forever without wearing out or melting. Sure, the asbestos and other nasty chemicals involved with the thing have ruined my lungs, but that's a small price to pay for the protection the suit gives me.

Though I'm not fighting in the war all the time, there is still a reason why I need to wear my suit 24/7. Maybe I should explain why.

After learning that smoke gave me nice visions instead of weird ones, I tried experimenting. I soon found out that different types of smoke gave me different hallucinations. Burning propane made broad bands of rainbow colors stretch across the landscape. Burning gunpowder made me see bubbles. Burning people gave me the sense of fluttering wings, like the ones who were burning to death were suddenly able to stand up and fly away.

See, that last one, there's a reason I was able to figure out what it made me see. When I experimented with fire, burning different things and then seeing what their smells looked like, I got a little…out of hand. A little spilt lighter fluid, and accidentally dropping the match…

Heh, it all seems a bit funny, in hindsight. Most people wouldn't think it was funny at all, but then again, most people aren't insane. Still, I think that entire incident should be thought of as a learning experience. Lesson learned number one: don't play with fire in any buildings if you still want them to be there at the end of the day.

I mentioned earlier that certain sights also gave me weird sensory cross-overs. Smells make me see things, but sights instead make me hear things. This tends to show up whenever I see a lot of fire. Little flames, like lighters and campfires, aren't enough to make me hear anything. Larger flames, though, like watching my entire bedroom blazing as fire licked up the walls, make a happy symphony ring in my ears. I think it has something to do with how fire flickers at the corner of my sight, stirring up a sound so beautiful that I've never heard anything that even comes close.

That's the reason I use such a large, bulky flamethrower. It can't shoot very far, but makes huge bursts of fire, especially when I sweep it across to set everything near me ablaze. Every time I do that, I hear cheerful, upbeat music.

I'm getting sidetracked. I still need to explain why I need such an invincible fire suit.

Most of my synesthesia is limited to either happy hallucinations or weird ones. Only one specific hallucination is completely negative without a doubt. That is what I experience whenever I feel myself getting burned.

I told you what my other sensory mix-ups made me sense. Trust me when I tell you that you do not want to know what I feel when I burn myself. Granted, the first time I felt that, I was getting more than a little burnt. Day-to-day amounts of burning, like the little bits of searing that might come in through a seam in a regular fire suit, probably wouldn't make me feel that kind of nightmare. Still, I don't even want to risk coming close to feeling that again. This is why I need to wear my seamless fire-proof suit every second of every day.

Oh, but there's another, happier thing I learned from my not-so-little accident – hearing certain things makes me smell certain things. My disease makes my senses go full circle, I guess. Anyways, the sound of people screaming makes me smell the rich, sweet scent of candy, cake, and other delicious food. This happens whenever someone screams, no matter if it's an enemy, an ally, or even my own parents.

So, whenever I walk into a battlefield and start setting things on fire, I smell a lot of smoke, see a lot of flame, and hear a lot of screaming. All my hallucinations cross over into each other, replacing my old reality with bubbly rainbows on a landscape of candy as cherubs flutter about singing music. I like to call this place Pyroland.

I know. I'm insane. I already told you this.

Do I know what I'm doing whenever I set people on fire? Of course I do. But, at least to me, Pyroland is a lot more memorable than whatever I happen to do when I'm fighting in the war. I don't remember how many people I kill in each battle, but I do remember how many cherubs I see. Our Medic tells me that happens a lot for people with synesthesia. We remember our hallucinations better than the things that caused them.

Do I feel bad about killing everyone, mostly by letting them slowly roast to death? Not really. After all, I am completely insane. There are a lot more things wrong with me than some simple synesthesia.

* * *

**Because I know people will be asking, yes, I am a synesthete. Just a mild one, though - the kind that subconsciously links certain colors to certain numbers and words. I'm nowhere near the level the Pyro is at in this story.**

**This is actually my first fanfic for TF2. I only started playing it about, what two weeks ago? Still, I enjoy taking something a fandom readily accepts - for instance, the Pyro not really knowing all the destruction he/she causes - and turning that on its head. I have to say, however, that I don't think I've written a fanfic quite this dark before. If you don't see what's dark about this fic, then maybe I didn't do a good enough job implying what happened to Pyro's parents.**

**Feel free to review and let me know how I've done, writing for this different fandom.**


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